Washington,
DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Associated Press is getting dogged from
pro-life advocates who say the news service recently misreported that
90 percent of private insurance plans pay for abortions. However,
the figure is likely the other way around and AP may have relied on
a faulty pro-abortion study for its figures.

Writing
at the Weekly Standard, John McCormack says the statistic is simply
"not true."

He
points to April testimony from Obama HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,
who told members of the Senate that "Most private plans do not
cover abortion services except in limited instances."

He
also notes that AP could have looked to coverage from Congressional
Quarterly, which reported as recently as July 15 that, "Most
people with employer-sponsored insurance also must pay for abortions
out of their own pocket."

CQ
cited Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for Americas Health Insurance
Plans, the insurance industrys trade association, who said,
"Most insurers offer plans that include this coverage, but most
employers choose not to offer it as part of their benefits package."

Douglas
Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee
told the Weekly Standard how the number is wrong and the study biased.

"This
report was based on voluntary responses sent to AGI by insurers who
were selected by AGI to be surveyed by complicated criteria described
in the report," he said. "Moreover, the report itself said
that 'some of the insurers reporting that abortion was covered narrowly
interpreted this to mean when a pregnancy threatens a womans
health.'"

"Clearly,
then, AGI arrived at the 87% figure by counting any respondent in
its sample that covered abortion even to save the life of the mother.
Thus, this report is essentially useless in estimating the extent
of private insurance coverage of elective abortion," Johnson
explained.

McCormack
describes the flaws of the AGI study another way.

"If
the NRA sends out a questionnaire, most pro-gun-control candidates
simply won't respond. The same phenomenon surely occurred with health
insurance companies that do not provide abortions not responding to
the Guttmacher Institute, which was once formally connected to Planned
Parenthood, and remains ideologically committed to legalized and taxpayer-subsidized
abortion," he writes.

Moffitt
suggested that employers and employees find out whether their insurance
company pays for abortions. If so, he urged pro-life advocates to
switch to another health care plan or look to one of the many plans
funded by Catholic and Protestant Christian groups that don't include
abortion coverage.

Though
the Associated Press misreported what private insurance plans do in
terms of covering elective abortions, McCormack says there is a larger
problem to consider -- especially when it comes to the debate over
a government-run health care plan.

"The
real issue here isn't whether or not private plans cover abortions--it's
whether or not American taxpayers should have to pay for abortions,
something that is wildly unpopular and has been prohibited since 1976
by the Hyde amendment," he writes.

"Pro-abortion
advocates, however, have been spinning an argument that since most
employer based plans cover abortions--which, in fact, they do not
as noted above--then Obama's public plan and subsidized insurance
plans should require abortion coverage as well," he continues.